Next build F4U- Corsair

Is that solid peice in photo 2 meant to be the pit? omg i knew testors was bad but i didnt think that bad. good luck man. you seem to be off to a good start considering what youve got to work with.

haha! Yes I got a little dude to glue there.  Hes shoulders up.  I have come to the conclusion that Im gonna build the aircraft perfectly.....yep, right after hes been shot down.....

lol nice, it apears to be a 1D so doing it about a story i read once wont work, cos that was a 4. im sure i could scrounge up a story for you to do a dio of if you wanted.

Do you have a copy of my stash, or what? I also have that kit! The cockpit/pilot bust is bad, So I just planed on painting the canopy silver or something. What are you planning to do?

I have already painted the little dude.  You cant see through the canopy anyway.  Its like looking though glass with water running down one side.  After I apply the final flat coat or future you can tell someones there, just no details.  I was thinking to check eduard's for a better canopy, but thought, not this guy.  Looking at the front of the box, the canopy I got is the same transparency.  Happy building!

Are you clear-coating AFTER you install your canopy?  It looked like that's what happened on your SBD, that you shot it with Dullcoat, hence the frosted look.... In a word or three, don't do that... Don't Glosscoat it either...  If it fits ok, I just hand-paint the frames and attach with white glue after everything's done..  If you have to do a lot of work to blend it in to get it to fit, well... That's another animal..

As for your skills... Well, the only way to develop those is to BUILD, lol.. And using the streched sprue for antenna is probably the easiest bit of scratch-building one can undertake as a beginner... Go for it... Just be sure to get it REALLY thin in that scale... No more than the diameter of a human hair... Also, you don't have to glue it in place as a tight-wire.. A little slack is ok.  Just, once the glue is dry and cured, take a heat-source like a freshly-blown out match, soldering iron, incense stick, etc, and move it close to (BUT DON'T TOUCH) it and when you reach  just the right distance, it will suddenly snap tight...  

The next step would be to try to scratch-build a simple cockpit.. You just cut away the solid area and with a little sheet styrene you can easily build a floor, sides and a panel & seat... Another piece of stretched sprue and you got a joystick.. If you want, you can cut paper patterns from index card for the sides, floor & bulkheads, then transfer that to the sheet.   In that scale however, you can eyeball easily enough, and you don't need a library of refs either.. 

Suggestion, rather than duplication, is the force behind "Creative Gizmology" and simple scratch-building..

Once you start doing it, you'll get hooked, I promise ya..  And this is the best part.. The more you do it, the easier it becomes, the less you'll feel a need to rely on after-market parts to make the old kits look great, and *gasp* won't be spending ridiculous amounts of money on over-priced, over-engineered "New" kits, and then MAYBE some manufacturers will MAYBE get their acts together and get the prices down from "Un-farking-believable" to at least "Tolerable"...

One of 'em might even release a a1/48th scale 25-30.00 PB4Y... 

(Hey, I can dream...)

At any rate, keep Hammering (get it?) away at 'em..  You'll build more than just a model.. You'll build confidence in your skill-sets, and that's something that not everyone does...

Yes,....yes I did clear coat the canopy....  But the canopy from the box was not transparent from the begining...thats why I shot it anyway....    I like your post, I learned alot from it.  Im also learning....                   The Modeler Makes The Model.                The kit is nice, but its just a guide.  Thanks von Hammer!   What did Kramer say? "I'm listening"  lol

A quick update.

some canopies cant be helped too much, but for some, if you dip it in Future, clarity really improves!

Sooo...I aquired acrylic blue and plugged the holes...acrylic blue comes in a large amount

While waiting for the filler to dry I sanded the fuselage cause even when I removed the alignment pins it still didnt match up.

I thinned the filler with %90 alcohol till it was pretty much thin milk....my first attempt at using the stuff.  I used a brush to apply it to the aircraft.  To my surprise it still dried and worked.  I filled the stabilzer top and botttom. 

The stabilizer took some work as one side would sit higher than the other.  As I tried to pull up on it to possibly bend the alignment pin to get them to match, the aligment pin broke off.  Which is fine by me cause I kinda like not using them.

So the bottom fuselage/wing gap would not cooperate with me while attempting 3M blue.  I tried something else I read about.  I first filled the gap with talc powder and then placed super glue on top of it.  It was sweet.  The superglue instantly harden.  The down fall is sanding it off.  It wasnt to bad with a needle file to 220 grit followed by super fine.

While waiting for the drying process I attempted to slight weather/ dry brush the engine cylinder to look somewhat shadowed/oily.  I also finished the next step of the prop.

Finally I layed down a primer to see what else needs sanding.

Being hot where I live (Yuma AZ) the primer usually dries before it hits the model.  It can be done right but I dont mind a little sanding cause it gives me a feel of what Im gonna do next.  Thanks for watching!

To be continued...

Looking good, your doing well. 

Not done yet...I have some touch up to do and maybe a final dull coat.  I used some reference material on the net and found my model was missing wuite a few things.  So I stretch some sprue, added antennas on the rudder, in front of cockpit, and behind cockpit.  Then added radio cables.  I also added an antenna on the right wing. 

She looks really good. i think your refering to the port wing and i beleive (correct me if im wrong guys) its a pitot tube. used for measuring relative airspeed. But that aside. she looks pretty damn good. wish i could turn them out that quick. im a slow average quality builder lol

A question about weathering.  Say if I wanted to put flash around the guns in the wings it would be a black.  Being that the aircraft is dark sea blue it would be rather hard to see any weathering less the paint chips in silver.  Also the exhaust.  Would I mixed the black with a grey residue or how would I go about achieving this with a dark aircraft?

rule of thumb. the darker the aircraft the lighter the weathering. so i black aircraft would be weathered in a buff or light brow and a white aircraft would be weathered in black or very dark brown. so with a dark sea blue fight. a medium brown for the exhausts and a medium grey for gun smoke residue. really its just a case of playing with colours till it looks right on a test piece. but before you go putting it on your kit. leave it overnight. you might disagree with your decision in the morning.